Cleric's Soft Wood Short Bow of Ogre Slaying

Cleric's Soft Wood Short Bow of Ogre Slaying rests on a sun-warmed bench, the wood pale as dawn and softly figured with grain that seems to breathe under a thin, honeyed lacquer. Its limbs are slim and graceful, a bow that favors speed over brute force, yet the tip carries a quiet, almost glinting resilience. The grip is wound in linen dyed the color of old prayers, worn smooth by patient hands, and along the bow’s belly run delicate sigils—a mercy-cross, a crescent moon, and a tiny pilgrim’s helm—etched so finely that the eye nearly misses them until the light catches and they wink to life. The string, a pale catgut, hums when drawn, a sound like a distant bell that invites restraint rather than reckless release. It wears its name with a quiet pride, as if the weapon itself remembers the vow spoken over it: Ogre Slaying, not as a boast, but as a duty carried in wood and breath. Its origin threads through a cloister’s tale rather than a battlefield’s clamor. In a monastery perched above a river valley, a master bowyer pressed a patient hand into the soft grain, coaxing it to become something more than timber. A healer-welder blessed the shaft with a rite of restraint, teaching that mercy can ride with aim, that a single, true shot may save a life without wasting another. The clerics who kept watch over pilgrims believed that this bow’s strength lay not in loud bursts but in controlled rhythm—the ability to place arrows with care, the magic of a release that cuts through the wind and the fear in a watcher’s eye. From those whispered origins grew the bow’s reputation: a weapon for practitioners who heal as they protect, who stand firm yet move like a rumor, small enough to slip through chaos but potent enough to crack a ogre’s armor with a well-placed strike. In the world it moves through, the Cleric’s Soft Wood Short Bow of Ogre Slaying feels like a companion in a longer, unfolding narrative. It’s prized by those who patrol the thresholds between safe harbor and wilderness, by scouts who must see a long road before they walk it, and by healers who need the silence of a clean shot to buy a moment’s breath for a fallen ally. Its light weight and balanced feel invite quick repositioning, drawing and firing with a practiced ease that lets a wielder thread between brambles and boulders, keeping eyes on the greater need rather than the loud threat. Against ogres, its virtue isn’t just in raw damage but in precision—finding the vulnerable gap between scales, the ankle, the hinge of a knee—where one arrow, well placed, might turn a charge into a retreat and spare bystanders from the blast of clumsy panic. I heard tell of its passage through the bustling stalls of Saddlebag Exchange, a place where orders, whispers, and promises mingle like dust in sunbeams. A seasoned trader described the bow’s waiting price as a cautious, live trade: two to five gold coins depending on how much history the wood carries, how bright the sigils still gleam, and whether the owner swears the relic has tasted ogre blood and stood with the clerics who blessed it. A buyer’s breath paused, then exhaled as the deal shifted hands, the bow slipping into a new life, its story expanding as it travels from temple, to trader’s cart, to a hunter’s steady aim. And so the bow continues, not merely as gear but as a thread in a larger tapestry—one that ties mercy and might, road-worn tales and quiet courage, into the living memory of a world that still fears ogres and still watches the moment a single arrow can change the course of a night.